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6 Ways to Increase Conversions on Your Website

Driving traffic to your website should be at the top of the list when it comes to your online marketing and sales strategies. But simply driving more traffic doesn’t guarantee those leads will do anything more than take a quick glance and move along. The key is grabbing their attention, providing relevant, valuable information to keep that attention, and encouraging them to take action, turning those visitors into leads which can then be converted to sales.

There aren’t many things more frustrating than losing leads, but if your website isn’t optimized for driving action, you’re probably losing more than you think. A realistic goal for converting visitors into leads is about 3-5% if they land on your homepage or a blog. If you’ve got landing pages in place, you should be shooting for closer to 15%.

So what does that mean? Well, it means for every 1,000 unique visits to your site, you should be generating 30-50 new leads (15 new leads for every 100 that hit landing pages).

So how’s your site doing? Are you frustrated?

Don’t be. Instead, just make a few simple changes and increase that number. Here are 6 ways you can increase conversions on your website.

1. Encourage action in your blog.
If you’re using content marketing to drive traffic to your site, a lot of your visitors are going to land on a blog post. This is a great opportunity to capture a lead. It’s also the perfect opportunity to increase your bounce rate. To avoid the latter, you need to have calls-to-action in your blog. We’ll touch on sidebar and footer CTAs, but you should also include them within your individual posts.

2. Speaking of your sidebars…
Sidebars provide the perfect opportunity to catch a visitor’s eye and get them into your sales funnel. At the very least, you should have an offer to join your list and receive updates, but a better route is to include free offers for valuable pieces of content, like an ebook, infographic, or email series. You should include at least one “top of the funnel” offer, but it doesn’t hurt to offer up some more in depth content here as well. Sidebar CTAs are great for your blog post pages, but work well throughout your entire site as well.

3. Scrolling pop-ups can pop-up leads. (see what I did right there?)
If someone scrolls more than 20% down your blog post, there’s a good chance they’re actually reading it. And if they’re actually reading it, they most likely have some interest in the topic. This is a great place for a scrolling pop-up. You’ve most likely seen these pop up in the bottom corners or sites, or maybe they pop-up smack in the center. Regardless of where you set yours to pop-up, they are a great tool to be used on long blog posts or other pieces of content. Make sure your pop-up contains an offer and lead capture.

4. Offer content and use landing pages.
You’ve got something special and you have value. And although you should most certainly offer great content for free, all of it doesn’t need to be completely free. Create premium content pieces and put them behind landing pages that require the user’s name and email to download. Connect your landing pages to automated email workflows and you’ve got a lead capturing and lead nurturing machine ready to convert those leads to sales.

5. A/B testing is key.
Your website is never complete. It should always be adapting to what works with your audience. Track your visits, conversions, and sales closely. Use these stats to run some A/B tests on CTAs and landing pages, and then make changes as needed. This will help keep your website fresh, as well as provide you with a strong direction for future designs.

6. One last thing before you go?
Not everyone is going to convert on the first try. In fact, a good majority of visitors will not convert at all. But you’ll sleep better knowing you gave it your all. So why not try an exit intent pop-up? When a user shows behavior that typically leads to an exit, such as scrolling quickly through the page or a quick movement of the mouse towards that close button, a large pop-up is triggered with one last offer. Exit intent pop-ups have proven to convert at high rates, and if that person is already leaving your site, what does it hurt to try one last time, right?

Whether you make all these changes, or none of them, you should be monitoring your traffic and conversion rates, and making changes constantly. Your website is almost pointless if all it does it provide contact information to visitors. If you have a brick and mortar business, Google will do that for you. And if you have a digital business, your website IS your business, and it better be working for you.